Their lips met, a softness and a sweetness. Her kiss was the last star before dawn, one small torch against the dark that heralded the coming of a greater light.

They murmured the secrets of the world into each other, hidden in the press of heat and hands. Parvani wondered if this was how the sun would feel if the moon ever caught up to it, a coming together of light and dark, a warmth that was eclipsing.

Hades’s lips skimmed down her throat, onto the shelf of her exposed collarbone. Parvani shivered and ran a hand through the dark glossy falls of the god’s hair. Her body was made of a million exclamations, all of them begging for touch.

It was the first time Hades entered their bedroom since their wedding night. This, Parvani knew, was their actual wedding night. Fabrics sliding away from skin, semi-frantic kisses. She marveled at the smooth curve of Hades’s hip. The soft inside of her thigh. Her own body was somehow more beautiful next to hers, and they were more beautiful together, a fusion of memory and creation. This is better than any dream, Parvani thought.

And as if Hades agreed, her sleep that night was blissfully blank.

The Netherworld seemed brighter and more wondrous than ever. It was a living thing, thriving off passion. As winter hardened the world above, Parvani was resplendent in her love and curiosity.

Except when they stood before the Dreamers’ Gate, carving out the dark seeds of nightmares.

It happened during the last of winter’s choke hold. Parvani had been observing Hajan these last few months, quietly demanding that the nightmares turn more vicious, more unrelenting. She had turned bold in the light of Hades’s affections, powerful in body and purpose. Eventually she’d come to savor that twilight merging of pleasure and pain, love and darkness at war with each other even as they entwined.

So they gave him dreams of treason and subterfuge. Spies and assassins and foreign conquerors. Dreams of grave illnesses, poisons, gangrenous diseases that peeled the flesh away from his bones. She could see their effect through the window of the archway—Hajan reduced to an ashen, trembling mess of a man, bloodshot eyes constantly shifting in suspicion. Parvani sometimes stumbled away to be sick, though she did not ask Hades to stop.

Perhaps, if she’d known what was coming, she would have.

Hajan had become wilder, more unstable in his demands. He broke into sobs and threw goblets of wine at the walls. He beat his wives and sons (Parvani clenched her fists and teeth, feeling responsible) and ordered more than one of his advisors to public execution for doing little more than cautiously questioning his decisions.

And then one day, his fragile shell shattered.

He was shaking after a nightmare about a usurper, faceless and young and mocking. He’d been forced naked before the city, then drawn and quartered. Hajan paced his chambers, mumbling and frantic, clothes practically falling off his emaciated frame.